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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29005092">A Partial Catalogue of Lost Works from Alderaan Based on References Contained Within the Celebratus Archive of Obroa-skai</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/atamascolily/pseuds/atamascolily'>atamascolily</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alderaanian Culture (Star Wars), Books, Destruction of Alderaan (Star Wars), Gen, In-Universe Meta, Literary References &amp; Allusions, Planet Alderaan (Star Wars), Worldbuilding</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-04-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-04-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 11:47:47</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,606</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29005092</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/atamascolily/pseuds/atamascolily</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
      <p>Thank you to the Star Wars Random Name Generator (now sadly defunct) and the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_literary_work">Lost Works</a> Wikipedia page for inspiration and food for thought. </p><p>Also, many thanks to noxelementalist and celinamarniss for their suggestions and reassurances!</p><p>Prompt: "Lost literature from Alderaan". </p><p>(Full list of references and allusions at the end.)</p>
    </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Worldbuilding Exchange 2021</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>A Partial Catalogue of Lost Works from Alderaan Based on References Contained Within the Celebratus Archive of Obroa-skai</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/tablelamp/gifts">tablelamp</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Thank you to the Star Wars Random Name Generator (now sadly defunct) and the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_literary_work">Lost Works</a> Wikipedia page for inspiration and food for thought. </p><p>Also, many thanks to noxelementalist and celinamarniss for their suggestions and reassurances!</p><p>Prompt: "Lost literature from Alderaan". </p><p>(Full list of references and allusions at the end.)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>One of the fundamental premises of the Celebratus Archive of Obroa-skai and its sister institutions across the galaxy is that concentrating information within a single location is preferable--desirable, even--under the assumption that these establishments are far easier to maintain, protect, and monitor. However, this assumption was challenged by the former Galactic Empire's development of the first Death Star battle station, and the subsequent destruction of the planet Alderaan and the complete obliteration of its diverse and beautiful landscape, as well as the vast majority of its people and cultural resources. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>An artistic, scientific, and cultural center for generations, the vast and expansive interplanetary library system of Alderaan (concentrated in its capital of Aldera) was home to many priceless volumes and files unduplicated elsewhere, especially those of particularly ancient provenance or primarily of local interest. While many of these so-called "lost works" later emerged with duplicates in established reference collections and the black market book trade, others failed to surface, and are assumed to no longer exist outside the references and catalogues and the memories of the small percentage of survivors.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>What follows is an attempt to catalogue some of these "lost works," as determined by references in surviving manuscripts contained within the Celebratus Archives itself. </em>
</p>
<ul>
<li>The four-act play <em>Much Ado About Something</em> by Kristofer Kriek Bain, based on the classic novel <em>Sir Twilight</em> by man-of-letters (and later convicted felon) Ghent One-Howel. What we know of the plot comes from a rough outline in an article by noted critic Manuelo Llandon in the <em>Theatrical Quarterly Review</em> 34:3(16-22):</li>
</ul><p> </p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>  ...the dashing Hakk Nightshade is in love with the beautiful Yaves, who has promised to marry a member of the rival Echo family to end a longstanding feud. Hakk's suicidal despair is interrupted by the delusional but well-intentioned Sir Twilight--who mistakenly believes himself to be a Jedi, despite his demonstrated lack of aptitude for the Force--and his bumbling droid assistant S3-NO. Twilight is greatly disturbed by Hakk's plight and vows to help by playing matchmaker between Hakk's competition and the minor noble Mythus. After much confusion and mistaken identity--which only serves to escalate the tension between families almost to the breaking point--the play ends with a double wedding in which Hakk and Yaves are married, and Sir Twilight and S3-NO congratulate themselves on a job well done.</p>
</blockquote><ul>
<li>The full text of the <em>Solacement</em> of Spencer Cole, the ground-breaking work that introduced the <em>solace</em> tradition to early Republic Alderaanian mourning rituals. This literary form mingles oratory with epic poetry, weaving fact and fiction in a distinct rhetorical style used to comfort friends and relations of the deceased at funerals, though it was later supplemented by pilgrimages to the asteroid field formed from the planet's remains, popularly referred to as "the Graveyard" (see Maxcytoka's <em>A Generation of Pain: Voices of the Alderaanian Disaspora</em> for more details). The extant text as preserved by Adira Andromias in her work <em>Divine Inferences</em>, illustrates Cole's ideas concerning his beloved cousin's journey through various stages of the afterlife. Five years after the destruction of Alderaan, Devaronian scholar Olothorin Na' Ashukahwa claimed to have discovered a non-fragmentary version of the <em>Solacement</em> in the Celebratus Archives. However, upon publication, leading scholars declared it to be a clever fraud, and the original text may never be recovered.</li>
<li>Andromias's <em>Divine Inferences</em> also contains the only surviving fragments of the <em>Lament for Tantema</em>, the <em>Memorianum</em>, and the <em>Alderaanian Odes</em>, three other classic works of mourning literature thought to have been inspired by the <em>Solacement</em>.</li>
<li>Thanks to the ease in which audio files can be replicated and their relatively small size, the vast majority of recorded Alderaanian popular music remains extant. However, a cursory run through the Celebratus Archives reveals that the links to many of these files in the collection are no longer operable, as the hosting service was a musical repository on Alderaan with no apparent backups. Works lost in this manner include the "Silver Sea Song Cycle" of Rhiannon Delenva and the chart-topping pop hit "Don't Need No War (To Make Peace With You)" by the sparklebop duo the Braided Brothers, both of whom perished along with their creation.</li>
<li>From commentary by Ehrissa Picus, we know that the <em>The Autobiography of Elizabeth Antur</em>--a vocal leader of the planet's nascent droid rights movement--was considered "poorly fleshed out and boring" upon its release, but little else.</li>
<li>Sections IV-VI and XIII of the surviving digital copies of the <em>The Proceedings of Tenth Alderaanian Expedition to the Outer Rim</em> are missing and the last known printed copies were contained within the Great Library of Aldera and were presumably destroyed.</li>
<li>
<em>The Killik's Guide to Pest Control</em> (the word "pest" more literally translated as "Creatures that Go Bump in the Night" in low Alderaanian) was a guide to the forms and habits of allegedly six thousand mythical spirits inhabiting the planet, and how to overcome them, as dictated by an unknown author claiming to be a Killik, a sentient insectoid species living on the planet prior to its settlement by humans in the pre-Republic era.</li>
<li>
<em>The Way of Peace</em> by Tethys Frohurst, one of the major influences in the Alderaanian pacifistic tradition, which survived only in oral accounts (see W. Retrac's <em>Reconstructing Tradition</em> for further details and <em>Survival at Stake: Reconciling Alderaanian Views on War and Peace in the Post-Planetary Era</em> by Riza Edeno.)</li>
<li>The mathematical text, <em>Hyperspace Transit Loci</em> of Sed. E. Mihcra, about which little is known but the title. Presumably it contained methods for calculating hyperspace routes through the method of loci (sets of points) of a given series of destinations, essential prior to the development of modern navicomputers.</li>
<li>
<em>Cursed Verses</em> by the iconoclast and bon vivant Rosh Prince, a collection of rhyming maxims with varying degrees of vulgarity in High, Middle, and Low Alderaanian.</li>
<li>The original version of <em>Violent Violet: a Novel in Thirteen Books and Two Epilogues</em> by Ian-e Creel was stolen from his publisher's landspeeder on Alderaan in the weeks prior to the planet's destruction; the author was later forced to reconstruct the manuscript entirely from memory in the aftermath of the disaster.</li>
<li>The first season of the acclaimed space ship drama <em>Visible Spectrum</em>, a drama of the planet's early history co-produced by the Aldera Public Holo channel and the more commercially-minded SpaceStars Media, was lost when SpaceStars accidentally overwrote the master tapes in their headquarters of Corellia two years after all the back-ups had been destroyed at Alderaan. Although the ship models survived and appeared in many other shows from the same era to keep costs down, no complete episodes of<em>Visible Spectrum</em> exist outside of a few scenes recorded for home use by fans. The show's plot was also documented in great detail by other fans on the HoloNet, although only in summaries, not working transcripts.</li>
<li>The entirety of the playwright Ares Vandergraff's works, whose works experienced a revival in popularity in the last decades of Old Republic and the Clone Wars that followed, including <em>Who's Afraid of Solomon Fyr?</em> (which was being performed for Queen Breha the day of Alderaan's destruction), <em>The Queen's Chamber-Raids</em> and the complete musical score for <em>If You're Happy And You Know It</em>, which survives in a few commercially available song sheets and at least three advertising jingles. One chorus that was repeated in extant parody operetta <em>The Taming of the Grue</em> and additional incidental music was discovered on Chandrila five years later.</li>
<li>Volume Mern of the massive <em>Encyclopedia of Alderaan</em> is missing, presumed lost, from the Celebratus Archives, with no backups existing in other reference collections. However, Volumes Aurek through Leth and Nern through Thesh are all accounted for.</li>
<li>An anthropological account of the matriarchal Fallanassi kinship group and their relationship to the "White Current" analogous to the "Force" harnessed by the Jedi Order by one Sifu Kassa exists only as a single reference in the Celebratus main catalogue. Topics covered included: illusions, the role religion in every day life, mirrors, matriarchy, coming-of-age rituals, and the ephemeral nature of reality itself.</li>
<li>
<em>On Braids</em> by Agriedana Joy, a reference manual for hairstyles appropriate to upper middle-class women in the Common Era. Although there is technically a volume under this name in the Celebratus catalogue, leading scholars consider it to be lecture notes by the so-called "False Agriedana" and it lacks the diagrams said to occupy the original.</li>
<li>
<em>The Care and Keeping of Uneti Trees: Everything You Need to Know About Their Husbandry and Care</em> by Alderaanian horticulturist Blit Tassi vanished from the collection following the rise of Emperor Palpatine and any surviving copies are presumed lost.</li>
<li>Thirty fragments remain from a thirty thousand-year history of the Republic by an anonymous Alderaanian commentator, as included in various anti-Imperial propaganda pamphlets.</li>
<li>

<p>Thalassa Organa's Lost Speech, given in honor of her ascension to the throne some 350 years prior to the Battle of Yavin, which legend claims was so engaging that witnesses neglected to take notes of its contents.In recent years, its alleged contents have been favorably compared to a speech made by Thalassa's direct descendant, Leia Organa, following her rise to prominence on the galactic stage following the collapse of the Galactic Empire...</p>
</li>
</ul><p>
  <em>Without question, the destruction of Alderaan was the greatest crime ever committed by the Galactic Empire. Not only was it a genocide of hitherto unforeseen ferocity, it was also a literary and cultural crime of the highest order. However, this tragedy also serves as a warning to librarians and archivists as to the importance of backing up the collections in order to ensure that any future disaster does not extinguish the treasures and stories they have dedicated their lives to preserving... </em>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>References and Allusions: </p><p><span class="u">Star Wars</span><br/>*<a href="https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Celebratus_Archive">Celebratus Archive</a>, <a href="https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Obroa-skai/Legends">Obroa-skai</a><br/>*<a href="https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Alderaanian_Graveyard">Graveyard of Alderaan</a> and <a href="https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Return_(Alderaanian)">The Returning</a><br/>*Various <a href="https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Alderaanian_Expedition">Alderaanian Expeditions</a><br/>*<a href="https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Killik/Legends">Killiks</a><br/>*<a href="https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Fallanassi">Fallanassi</a> and the <a href="https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/White_Current">White Current</a><br/>*<a href="https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Uneti_tree">Uneti Trees</a><br/>*<a href="https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Winter_Celchu">Winter Retrac</a><br/>*<a href="https://myevilmouse.tumblr.com/post/187722537023/this-is-an-album-cover-for-luke-skywalker-sings">Sparklebop</a></p><p><span class="u">Real-Life Works</span><br/>*<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_History_of_Cardenio"><i>The History of Cardenio,</i></a> by William Shakespeare<br/>*<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consolatio_(Cicero)"><i>Consolatio</i></a> by Cicero<br/>*deletion of <a href="https://fanlore.org/wiki/GeoCities#The_2009_Shutdown:_A_Sample_Plea_Regarding_the_Site_Closing">Geocities</a> and other fansites<br/>*<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bai_Ze"><i>Book of Bai Ze</i></a><br/>*<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inventio_Fortunata"><i>Inventio Fortunata</i></a><br/>*<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault!_Human!!#Availability"><i>Assault! Human!!</i></a><br/>*<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Maid_of_Arran#Performance_history">L. Frank Baum's theatrical works</a><br/>*<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln%27s_Lost_Speech">Abraham Lincoln's Lost Speech of 1856</a><br/>*<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avesta#Historiography">The Avesta</a>, the religious texts of Zoroastrianism.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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